Leap Day

"Time is a monster that cannot be reasoned with. It responds like a snail to our impatience, then it races like a gazelle when you can't catch a breath." — Joe Wentworth, "Simon Birch"

Today is Leap Day. Every four years (well mostly) we get an extra day. That's right, 2012 will be 366 days. The fact is most of us probably don't consider that much accept that it makes it more confusing about what day it is because we're so used to the shortened February setting. But this extra day really should be considered a gift, especially in our world today.

Over the summer, I was fascinated by a series on CNN which dubbed America the "No Vacation Nation." Basically, the crux of the argument centered on the approach to work and life in America as opposed to other countries. We work more hours and more days, pushing our family to the side. In other places — like Europe — the priorities are a little different.

That's what makes me think about Leap Day as a gift. We seem to be a people, particularly in the United States, where we never seem to have enough hours in the day or days in the week. In 2012, we get 24 extra hours. The question now becomes, what do we do with them.

Recently I had a chance to hear a short message from Andy Stanley, pastor of a large church in Georgia. He said that his best decision he made as a leader was to put his family first. For him, that meant leaving work at 4 p.m. every day to make sure he was present in the life of his kids and his wife. He said that required certain sacrifices in the way he did his job, but he felt God calling him to make different choices with his time, which is by far our most precious resource.

At first it sounded like a radical concept. But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. In fact, based on what I read last summer on CNN, I don't think people in Europe would even find that a strange decision. It only stands out because of the mindset we have developed in this country.

Ecclesiastes says there is a time and a season for everything. Sometimes we honestly need to put in extra time at work, and sometimes that is the right choice. But that isn't true every day. And no where in the Bible does it say we should marginalize our time with God and our time with our family on a consistent basis. In fact, the message we get from the Scriptures is quite the opposite.

Time never stops. We never get our time back. It is our most precious resource, and how we allocate our time says a lot about who and what we value. So on this, our rare precious gift of extra time, it's a good idea to stop and think about what our allocation of time says about what we value. No one who dies ever laments the fact they didn't spend more time working. People matter. Relationships matter. We should reflect that in our allocation of time.